The avoidance of ambiguity during conversation: More than mere priming or mimicry?

Jennifer M. Roche, The University of Memphis

Rick Dale, The University of Memphis

Roger J. Kreuz, The University of Memphis

Abstract

Interlocutors often omit important words during conversation,
which can lead to miscommunication during ambiguous scenarios (Rayner, Carlson, &
Frasyer, 1983). Haywood, Pickering and Branigan (2004) show that under ambiguous
situations, listeners are highly sensitive to syntactic primes. The studies
reported here evaluated the effects of linguistic and nonlinguistic cues to
ambiguity. Experiment 1 implemented a syntactic prime and a visual mistake from a
pseudo-confederate to promote disambiguation. Participants were successfully
primed to disambiguate their statements during the pseudo-conversation but the
visual mistake had no effect. Experiment 2 evaluated the effect of the visual
mistake in the absence of a prime during an ambiguous pseudo-conversation. There
was a significant effect of visual mistake for participants who believed they
were speaking with a real person. Overall, participants did not merely mimic
their pseudo-conversation partners syntactic prime, but perceived other
cues to the breakdown in communication to better clarify their own
statements.